“Silk has actually had a long history in the Messenia region,” Athens-based designer Christiana Vardakou tells me as we stroll the grounds of the newly opened Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino, located in a quiet pocket of the southwest coast of the Peloponnese right next to the modest village of Pylos. We’re about a 45-minute drive west from the town of Kalamata, which is today best known for its olives, but also once played host to a thriving ancient silk-weaving practice. Now, there’s not much of it left, Vardakou explains, adding that there may just be one operation around, and it wouldn’t be easy to access its very limited silk production. Still, as a designer, Vardakou is eager to explore the textile history of Greece—and that’s why today, we’re scavenging the hotel’s gardens to pluck flowers and plants that we can use to naturally dye a silk scarf.
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Photo: Courtesy of Mandarin Oriental Costa Navarino
Vardakou drives three hours from Athens to host these creative workshops exclusively for Mandarin Oriental guests. And it’s just one of the ways the hotel aims to connect visitors to the local culture. The Peloponnese is hardly an unknown destination: Historic towns like Mycenae, Nafplio, and Olympia as well as white-sand beaches in Elafonissos, Kalamata, and Mani get their fair share of summer tourism. But the area of Costa Navarino, a luxury resort development, is a much newer pin on the upscale travel map. The first phase of construction was launched in 2010, and nearly 15 years later, there’s still an easygoing pace to a vacation here. There are no cruise ship tours marching through in the middle of the day like Santorini. And while DJ-led events do happen, Myconian-style circuit parties aren’t the norm.
Instead, you could be hiking the nearby trails, seeking out tranquil beaches, visiting olive oil farms, or, like me, walking around Mandarin Oriental’s grounds with a Greek designer snipping and picking hibiscus, achillea, lavender, and yarrow for our DIY art project. We’re going to take our bounty to Navarino Agora, a new outdoor dining, shopping, and entertainment complex sandwiched between Mandarin Oriental and W Costa Navarino. Opened last summer, this is probably the liveliest part of the development, where you could eat international cuisine (from Peruvian to Lebanese), shop for resort wear from Vilebrequin and Melissa Odabash, and watch a movie. In ancient Greek, agora means an outdoor market where people gather. Agora Navarino serves much of the same function, and today, my natural dyeing activity with Vardakou is proving to be a particularly intriguing sight for the gathering public; a few stop to ask about what we’re doing. Near the center of the agora, the hotel installed a table stacked with all the supplies (including jars of the dried flowers Vardakou drove over from Athens) we’ll need to turn a plain silk scarf into a vision from my imagination.
